Dec 21, 2015

The Radio Times found itself in hot water with fans of The Apprentice on Sunday night when it announced plumber Joseph Valente had won the reality TV show before the result had actually been broadcast. The Radio Times had clearly scheduled a tweet announcing the result without factoring in the annual overrunning of Sports Personality of the Year which preceded The Apprentice on BBC1 and pushed its airing back by around 10 minutes.

Many of the Radio Times' followers on Twitter were unimpressed with the spoiler:

Nov 29, 2015

Certain newspapers are often among the first to criticise the meddling of the so-called "nanny state".

How dare this "nanny state" tell us how to live our lives or bring up our children.

Yet when the BBC recently announced it would be showing children’s TV programmes until 9pm at night many of those papers were up in arms. How can parents possibly put their kids to bed if CBBC is still on? What is the BBC thinking! The Times branded it "bad news for parents", the Daily Mail suggested the BBC would be to blame for "sleep deprivation" and related "behavioural problems" that could "damage children's learning ability". The Sun found a "sleep and neuro-disability consultant" to declare "CBBC's later schedule will disrupt children's evenings and sleep patterns".

How dare the BBC abdicate its "nanny state" responsibility to bring up our children for us.

Aug 17, 2015

According to the BBC's annual report, the Corporation broadcasts more than 98,000 hours of radio and television content for us to choose from each year and only 35 minutes - less than 0.0006 per cent of its output - was taken up by Songs of Praise from Calais.

So there you go.

Although the BBC won't say how much was spent on the Calais episode of Songs of Praise some basic maths tells us it must have accounted for a tiny part of our licence fees.

Songs of Praise is a small part of more than 8,200 hours of programming on BBC1, funded by a £1.1bn budget. That means the average cost of 35 minutes programming on BBC1 is about £78,000, with some broadcasts costing considerably less and some costing considerably more. Songs of Praise is clearly not a lavish production with big name stars and expensive special effects but it probably costs more than a repeat of Pointless. As such it seems likely the cost of that Calais episode to the 25 million homes and businesses who fund the BBC is most likely in the region of half a pence each, or less.

I didn’t watch the programme myself, but they are welcome to my half penny.

For more on why the BBC was right to take Songs of Praise to Calais and why many of the arguments against the licence fee don't stack up, see:

2) If the programme has ambitions to be more relevant and reach new audiences then this seems a smart move given how high-profile the Calais story is currently.

3) This would inevitably be used as a stick by all those who criticise the BBC for anything it does. And so it proved...

A selection of headlines from The Express, The Sun and the Daily Mail who all appear equally appalled at the BBC's decision to visit Calais for Songs of Praise.

It turns out Songs of Praise is indeed still going, but after more than 50 years it has been trying of late to arrest falling viewing figures by tinkering with its format. The trip to Calais is clearly an attempt to remind people it still exists and reach new viewers by tackling a current, highly relevant issue.

Top Story

The media have made the refugee crisis in Calais the top story over the past fortnight and no doubt Songs of Praise spotted not only an opportunity to thrust itself into a story which is high-profile and topical - not words often associated with Songs of Praise I imagine - but also an editorial opportunity to cover the crisis, not with the scaremongering xenophobia that has become so commonplace elsewhere, but with some humanity, via an examination of the faith which clearly fortifies some people living in adversity.

Of course the Songs of Praise decision was always destined to earn the ire of those media outlets who have been working hard to whip up a scare story that has brought out the very worst in their readers. Many of the comments posted on the Daily Mail website, for example, have been distinctly unchristian:

The decision to visit Calais was also destined to draw fire because it's the BBC daring to do anything. But it is easy to imagine the BBC would also be damned for turning its back on "old-fashioned Christian values" if it was to consign Songs of Praise to the TV scrapheap without at least trying to raise its profile and relevance.

When much of the country's media is openly right-leaning it is natural the Conservatives would find the BBC's even-handedness frustrating - hence the regular cries of bias. But many of the arguments the government is putting forward to justify cuts don't stand up.

Take the suggestion the BBC is bad for local media, when a more pressing issue should be the extent to which local media owners are bad for local media - as highlighted by recent strike actions. Under-investment in journalism and effective digital strategies, alongside poor commercial planning, are hurting local media far more than a competitor that has been around for decades. But if you were the boss of a local or regional media company who would you blame for the falling quality of your product? Certainly not yourself.

The accusation that the BBC has gone "chasing ratings" clearly has a grounding in truth. What broadcaster doesn't want to draw an audience? It is the BBC's job to bring people together in good times, bad times, fun times and important times.

While programming such as The Voice (X Factor without the hit singles) or celebrity gymnastics show Tumble (Splash without the swimming pool) may expose the extent to which the BBC has made some bad bets in the name of entertainment, the obvious risk aversion and lack of imagination behind such decisions arguably makes a case for giving the BBC more room to breathe, not less. However, much of this is subjective and the debate cannot become about individual shows or even whole channels and stations.

Objecting to the licence fee because you can name a handful of programmes, or even whole channels or stations you don't like makes about as much sense as walking out of a restaurant refusing to pay the bill after an excellent, fairly-priced meal because there were other things on the menu you wouldn't have liked if you had ordered them.

The BBC's greatest strength is the choice it offers across online, television and radio. But the choice needs to be rich and diverse and the economics of content are such that we need to judge value carefully. Somebody who only watches niche documentaries on BBC4 may cry foul that their licence fee funds big budget prime time shows on BBC1 but 300,000 people watching a documentary on BBC4 are getting far greater value for money than 10 million watching The Voice, because they are getting a scarce product for the same price as a more commoditised product.

People enjoying the BBC's factual and documentary output benefit from the licence fee in a way that simply couldn't be recreated under any other funding model. One television historian told me commercial broadcasters may still commission occasional historical documentaries "but only if they are about Nazis or the Titanic". He was joking. But only just.

Sport

Nothing characterises the BBC's dilemma more than sport. Damned if it shows too much, damned if it shows too little. Take the recent example of the BBC being sidelined in the world of Olympic coverage which resulted in angry criticisms of the Corporation. The BBC arguably taught the world how to broadcast sport but is now being pushed to the periphery because money talks and the BBC is having to keep its voice down.

Love it or hate it, the role of sport in creating those moments which unite us should not be underestimated, nor should the impact of the BBC losing rights, because without its involvement sport is reaching ever-smaller audiences - the current Ashes series being a prime example. Currently the rights owners, such as sports' governing bodies, don't seem to care but in time they surely will.

Of course there are things we'd all change about the BBC if we could and we're all entitled to our moans - not least because - for now - we pay for it, not advertisers and not the government. Keeping the licence fee separate from general taxation and annual government budget reviews gives us all a claim over the services we receive and research shows the majority of us still favour the licence fee as the preferred way of funding the BBC (ICM, 2014).

As BBC Director General Tony Hall pointed out this week: "The BBC does not belong to the government. The BBC belongs to the country. The public are our shareholders. So it is their voice that will matter most in this debate."

Jun 29, 2015

"Telly hit Top Gear smashed ratings records as millions tuned in last night to see axed host Jeremy Clarkson's final appearance... Last night's final episode starring Jezza, James May and Richard Hammond clocked up huge viewing figures for the BBC."

However, the story, which may well have been written even before Sunday's Top Gear had aired and certainly before official viewing figures were published, was a little wide of the mark.

Cue the kind of high-speed U-turn The Stig would be proud of, with Tuesday's Daily Star reporting:

"Motormouth Jeremy Clarkson's last ever Top Gear show went out with a whimper rather than a bang. Only 5.3 million viewers bothered to tune in on Sunday night for the big farewell."

What a difference a day makes: The Daily Star performs the kind of high-speed U-turn The Stig would be proud of.

The truth is somewhere in between. Top Gear's 5.3 million viewers neither "smashed ratings records" as claimed by the Daily Star on Monday, nor could it be classed a "flop" as claimed by the Daily Star on Tuesday. The viewing figures were marginally up on the previous episode of Top Gear (5.1 million) shown back in March and level with the first episode of the most recent series shown back in January (5.3 million).

Another week, another slightly over-reaching attack on the BBC from the Daily Mail, the most bizarre element of which is the headline criticism of the BBC's tea budget.

The paper reports the BBC spends around £230,000 per year on tea which is undoubtedly a lot of money, but to put it into some perspective it works out at a little over £10 per employee per year - or two cups of tea per member of staff, per day.

However, according to the Mail, two cups of tea per day is an example of "staggering waste" and "mind-blowing excess".

Somebody probably needs to get out more.

Of course not everybody drinks tea but if you factor in the thousands of visitors to BBC properties per month, attending events, meetings or taking part in shows, it’s easy to see how the BBC, in common with any large organisation, could brew its way through a staggering amount of tea.

The wider context here is the suggestion by the Mail that the BBC is wasting licence fee payers' money by spending "less than half" of a £5.1bn budget "on programmes".

It's a claim the BBC was quick to take issue with.

According to the BBC's own figures, the corporation last year received around £3.5bn from the licence fee (after handing over £256m for S4C and to support government broadband and local TV projects). Of that budget it spent £3.1bn on getting content on air. That means 88 per cent of licence fee money went on content.

What the Mail has had to do in order to get to "less than half" is include the BBC's successful commercial activities, not funded by the licence fee, in the overall budget of £5.1bn and more importantly ignore a great many significant costs that go towards getting programmes on air.

The BBC press office issued a number of corrections via Twitter.

For example, the Mail has ignored relevant costs such as newsrooms, broadcast equipment, edit suites, studio lighting and all associated operating costs such as office space and wages for writers and researchers.

Cupcakes

In its article the Mail also suggests the BBC has "pumped money into its commercial arm" however, the BBC's figures show the reverse is true - that the BBC's commercial arm returned £174m into BBC coffers due to the success of shows such as Doctor Who which are exported overseas by BBC Worldwide. The BBC's commercial arm made up £1.4bn - or 27 per cent - of the BBC's budget.

Other issues raised by the Mail in its article included the fact 12 BBC managers have the word "controller" in their job title. It's unclear why this is a problem. The paper has also resurrected a year-old story about a BBC employee expensing some cupcakes to pad out this latest rap sheet of "mind-blowing excess".

Apr 30, 2015

Journalist Camilla Long offended UKIP by suggesting she had been to South Thanet more than Nigel Farage in the course of researching an article.

In 2013, Nigel Farage described freedom of speech as one of "the absolute fundamentals of free western society", adding "we fought two world wars to defend these very things".

He's also a fan of jokes. In the past he has been keen to gloss over offence caused by his party by claiming members were just joking. In fact it has become something a theme for UKIP to suggest the rest of the country doesn't know how to take a joke.

So imagine the surprise when it was reported that UKIP had gone to the police over a pretty throwaway comment about the party's leader on comedy panel show Have I Got News For You.

Kent Police are understandably having none of it. But UKIP isn't leaving matters there. According to ITV News:

"A Ukip official said they planned to pursue the matter with officers from Scotland Yard, adding the party is "now at war with the BBC"."

Meanwhile, the BBC was left to point out the obvious:

"Have I Got News for You regularly make jokes at the expense of politicians of all parties."

Apr 29, 2015

Of all the reasons to criticise Ed Miliband, doing an interview with a popular online publisher, focused on politics and current affairs seems an odd one.

Sure, the online publisher in question is Russell Brand. Yes, Brand is ridiculous. Yes, he told people not to vote, but he has a large, young, potentially left-leaning following who are no doubt very capable of making up their own minds about whether to vote. On the face of it, it's easy to see why Miliband took the chance.

As an online publisher with reach into key demographics, Brand is very relevant. You don't have to like or admire him to acknowledge he's built an impressive media platform. Of course it's self-indulgent but as such it's arguably far more transparent than many other media outlets, owned and directed by distant proprietors with their own agendas.

10 Million Followers

Brand's YouTube channel has over a million subscribers. Each video gets between 100,000 and 250,000 views. It's fair to assume the Miliband one may get more viewers, from a broader audience and a great deal of wider coverage, because of all the publicity. To put his online influence into some context against more traditional media outlets, Brand's 10 million followers on Twitter compares to @TheSunNewspaper's 730,000 or @DailyMirror's 360,000. David Cameron dismissed Brand as a "joke" but sat down with Heat magazine, circulation 240,000, Twitter following 370,000.

That's not to say The Sun, The Mirror or Heat aren't also worthwhile outlets if politicians think they can get a fair hearing and reach an important audience. But the media is changing. Love him or hate him, Brand embodies a major trend as to where the media is heading.

Of course The Sun and the Daily Mail don't approve. They don't like Brand, they've been told by their bosses to attack Miliband and understandably they don't like any media trend that erodes the influence of traditional media. But it's hard to imagine their scorn will cost Miliband a single vote. After all, Mail readers can't abandon plans they never had to vote Labour.

Apr 16, 2015

The Daily Express, with its shared dislike of foreigners and mutual distrust of the EU, has made no secret of its close ties to UKIP and has actively been promoting the party at every opportunity in recent months.

Pass the bucket... Friday's Express suggests the paper has completed its transformation into a UKIP fanzine.

Desmond must surely now consider himself a shoe-in for a UKIP peerage at some point, he just needs to help UKIP get a few seats in the House of Commons first, though the problem there may be the crossover between Express readers and UKIP voters is probably pretty complete already. It's hard to see where else Desmond will be able to recruit additional supporters from across his media empire. Working some UKIP-friendly storylines into the output of his pay-per-view porn channels certainly seems a stretch.

Mar 20, 2015

The saga of Jeremy Clarkson seems to have been rumbling on for months and now it has rumbled onto the forecourt of the BBC as a tank, carrying a petition and a low-budget Stig impersonator arrived at New Broadcasting House demanding Clarkson and Top Gear are reinstated. The publicity stunt was organised by the Guido Fawkes blog and certainly caused a stir.

The petition has been signed nearly one million times, though it's hard to imagine anybody at the BBC will see the petition and be shocked to hear Clarkson and Top Gear are popular. They will have seen the viewing figures. They will have known how many countries the programme was sold to. But they will also be aware Clarkson was suspended for his alleged involvement in a "fracas", following a "final warning" from the BBC in 2014 about his behaviour. His popularity and that of the show don't appear to be in dispute.

Mar 02, 2015

Tony Hall: "If we didn't have a BBC funded by a licence fee, we'd have to invent it"

Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, addressed colleagues on Monday, and presented a picture of a national broadcaster at a "cross-roads" as it seeks to exploit the potential of new technology while facing charter review and calls from critics for it to be cut down to size.

The BBC has struck a more bullish note in recent times and Hall certainly spoke like somebody who knows the stakes are too high to let those with commercial or political scores to settle steer the debate unchallenged.

Hall said those who don’t support the BBC "should be transparent about their motivations, and honest about the consequences" - consequences which he believes would include the loss of balanced, impartial quality journalism, free from the influence of "shareholders, advertisers or any other paymasters".

"Take news," said Hall, taking aim at the journalistic output of unnamed rivals. "It's easy to find something on the internet that looks like a fact, that squawks like a fact but that isn't a fact. Central to our democracy is that we all proceed on the basis of shared information and don’t just make up our own."

Hall even went so far as to suggest "if we didn't have a BBC funded by a licence fee, such is the world we face, we'd have to invent it".

Of course such bullishness is both understandable and fairly predictable. Hall is defending his patch at a time when he may feel forces are conspiring against him. The general election this year may well return a government who would relish the opportunity to preside over the charter review.

Last week, parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee declared the licence fee was "becoming harder and harder to justify and sustain", though its suggestion of an unspecified levy on all households will have softened that prognosis somewhat. However, there were plenty of warning shots across the BBC's bows in the Committee report, including the suggestion the BBC should pull back from areas already well-served by commercial broadcasters.

Jan 12, 2015

Fox News may have a rich history of mangling even the most self-evident of truths but even by their standards, "expert" terrorism commentator Steve Emerson turned the nonsense up to eleven when he told viewers:

"In Britain there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims simply don't go in and parts of London there are religious Muslim police actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to religious Muslim attire."

Fox News perhaps neither knew nor cared if any of this nonsense was true - of course it isn't - but the broadcaster was quickly criticised for giving such idiotic comments airtime.

Now Emerson has issued an apology, stating:

"I have clearly made a terrible error for which I am deeply sorry. And I am issuing an apology and correction on my website immediately for having made this comment about the beautiful city of Birmingham."

Obviously Birmingham is beautiful. Of that there can be no doubt. But based on his earlier comments it seems unlikely Emerson has ever been there, or even seen many pictures. So it's unclear how he knows how beautiful it is.

Did Emerson just assume nobody would check his ridiculous claims? Was he relying on nobody watching having ever been to Birmingham, or knowing anybody there? Or London for that matter?

In his statement there is little by way of explanation:

"I do not intend to justify or mitigate my mistake by stating that I had relied on other sources because I should have been much more careful. I am not going to make any excuses. I made an inexcusable error."

As did Fox News in broadcasting his claims. That lack of editorial judgement saw them become the subject of the hugely popular #FoxNewsFacts trend on Twitter:

Jan 10, 2015

Following the atrocities in Paris this week, conducted by a small group of people claiming to be Islamic extremists, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has waded in to blame ALL muslims:

Perhaps Murdoch actually mistakenly believes 1.6 billion people are to blame for the despicable actions of a few. Or perhaps he is trying to inflame racial and religious tensions in the misguided belief that anger, acrimony and terror are good for newspaper sales and television viewing figures. Either way the media tycoon has faced fierce criticism over his ill-considered comments and may yet find some colleagues, investors and customers neither share nor appreciate his opinions.

Dec 14, 2014

On Wednesday Channel 4 News ran a hatchet job on a so-called 'hipster' cafe in London's Shoreditch which is selling imported breakfast cereals at upwards of £2.50 per bowl. Now the business owner has taken to Facebook to hit back at what he claims was a "completely unfair" attack.

The ''Cereal Killer' cafe has been pretty relentlessly mocked since its plans to sell bowls of breakfast cereal were first announced and clearly the Channel 4 News team were among those who thought it ridiculous. However, given they couldn't just run a report calling it absurd, they instead chose to challenge the cafe's owner on the issue of poverty in East London.

Channel 4 News reported:

"The business sells breakfast cereal from £2.50 a bowl, while one in every two children growing up in Tower Hamlets are living in poverty."

However you look at that statement those two things are unrelated, despite Channel 4's attempt to suggest there is a connection. Undoubtedly there is an awful divide between London's richest and poorest but laying the blame at the door of some hipsters who've been selling Cheerios for a week is more than a stretch.

In the video report the cafe owner, Gary Keery, shut down the interview on camera after becoming flustered by the line of questioning about poverty.

Gary Keery, left, the owner of the Cereal Killer cafe tells Channel 4's reporter: "Can we stop this interview, I don't like the questions you're asking."

He was clearly ill-prepared for the interview, hadn't thought it through and handled it very poorly. But he can be forgiven for not expecting to be singled out for such a line of attack, when a pub around the corner is charging upwards of £6 for a pint for beer and a restaurant up the road has a £19 starter and a £32 main course on its menu, as well as bottles of wine for more than £1,000 on its wine list.

In fact, if the Channel 4 News team are going to start picking fights with any business charging over the odds for goods and services in and around East London they'd never report on anything else.

Keery certainly felt his business had been singled out unfairly. In an open letter to Channel 4 News, published on Facebook, he wrote:

"You obviously don't understand business if you think I don't have to put a mark-up on what I sell. It may be the poorest borough in London but let's not forget Canary Wharf is also in this borough but I am the one to blame eh? I still have to pay over the top rent for my premises and pay the 12 staff I have employed so I either have to make profit or I will be out of business. Maybe if I charged over £3 for a coffee and dodged taxes like some cafés - the reporters would leave me alone."

Keery also took the opportunity to point out that the reporter who visited his business didn't even pay for the cereal he ate while there.

"You didn't even pay me for the cereal which you could so easily afford... so I will send you a bill for the extortionate £3.20."

Touché.

On the bright side, Keery should probably console himself with all the free publicity his cafe has been getting.

Nov 22, 2014

Many commentators have noted that events surrounding the Rochester and Strood by-election this week have seemed like a scene from The Thick Of It. So with apologies to the original writers and anybody offended by bad language here I have imagined how that scene might go:

Scene 1:

Nicola Murray: "Malcolm I Tweeted a picture of a house and a white van for Christ's sake, can't we keep a little perspective!"

Malcolm Tucker: "Perspective! As in showing whether things are near or far away? That's a good fucking idea because right now I wish you were fucking far away. Like on Mars! Though you'd probably find a fucking Martian with some tacky fucking space-gnomes out the front of his intergalactic council house and take the piss out of him too!"

Nicola: "But Malcolm I just thought..."

Malcolm: "Well there's a fucking first! How did that feel using muscles you've never used before? If you want to think, join a fucking think tank where you can't do any harm! I do the thinking, you do the nodding and smiling and the not-fucking-tweeting-pictures-of-voters-houses."

Malcolm: “White Van Dan-fucking-tastic! Well done Nicola, you managed to insult a self-writing headline. You could at least make the bastards work for it! So come on Olly, what's their White Van Plan with Dan Dan the White Van Man who's about to flush Nicola's career down the White Van pan?"

Olly: "They're taking Dan and a white van full of flags to Nicola's house with a camera crew to demand an apology."

Malcolm: "Well that's fucking lucky because we've got loads of those. I've got an apology for an MP right here, drowning in an apology for a news story. And I've got an apology for a political party pissing away its chances of winning a general election that should have been the easiest win since fucking Mugabe awarded himself another term, because of the apology for a twat in Number 10 and his apology for a shambling clusterfuck of a government. Which one do they want first? Because frankly they're welcome to the whole fucking lot of you!"

Scene 2:

Olly: "Email from Glenn. White Van Dan has written a 'Danifesto' for The Sun."

Malcolm: "A Danifesto? Of course he fucking has! And I bet it's a nasty mess too."

Olly: "Pretty much. Glenn says it's not been well thought through at all."

Malcolm: "It's not been thought through? It's by somebody who put his name to a fucking 'Danifesto'. Of course it's not been thought through. But Dan Dan The Half-Baked Plan doesn't have to think things through. He's getting paid to stand there holding a fucking flag with a Sun logo on it. A fucking metal pole could do that job. But it doesn't make us any less fucked."

Nov 19, 2014

Spare a thought for ITV football commentator Clive Tyldesley. Not only did he have to stay behind after Tuesday night's Scotland v England match to re-record a crucial piece of commentary in time for the highlights package, he also had to squeeze the double-barrelled "OXLADE-CHAMBERLAIN" into the same space as "ROONEY" having got the name of England's first scorer wrong.

Nov 12, 2014

Oi! Oi! The death of Dapper Laughs has been confirmed by the BBC. As controversial as his TV career was shortlived and ill-conceived, Dapper lost his battle against decency and evolution on Tuesday, following a well-documented sickness that had already seen him cancel some tour dates.

Dapper Laughs may be briefly remembered as just another obnoxious turd flushed down the sewer of low-budget, unambitious television but to some fans he was actually much less than that. To them he was the poster boy for objectifying and demeaning women at a time when such behaviour rarely gets its own television show.

Coming to terms with the news Dapper Laughs is no more, some viewers took to Twitter to say "good riddance". Referring to the sudden nature of the news, another added "not before time".

However, some were left searching for answers.

"What on earth was ITV thinking in the first place?" asked one viewer.

It is a very good question. Dapper's misogyny may have earned him a following on social media but he was clearly ill-suited to the role he was given on the fringes of prime time at the start and concurrent end of his television career.

Some may say Dapper was just the latest in a string of grotesque comedy characters, but unlike more accomplished efforts his refusal to lapse into satire set him apart and bestowed a troubling authenticity. While other comedians might have ultimately turned the joke upon their character or themselves, Dapper ensured whatever glimmer of an ill-advised joke may have been lingering around his performance was aimed elsewhere, normally towards women.

Dapper Laughs leaves behind a large collection of old copies of Nuts magazine and some Lynx deodorant.